Small businesses could benefit from radical changes to accident reporting proposed by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

Small businesses could benefit from radical changes to accident reporting proposed by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).

Responding to a Health & Safety Executive (HSE) consultation, RoSPA said that merely changing the threshold at which accident reports must be made to the HSE will do little to help small business.

It proposes that companies notify the HSE only for the most serious accidents with employers required to investigate and keep internal records of all less serious accidents.

This will focus business "on what can be done to encourage better learning by employers, not only from accidents and injuries but from significant near misses", it said.